


pieces of a heart

by thehaakun



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: F/F, Light Angst, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-22
Updated: 2019-08-22
Packaged: 2020-09-23 22:35:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20347921
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thehaakun/pseuds/thehaakun
Summary: She knelt down, ignoring the ghastly scars and cuts across her arms and knees, and she reached trembling hands out at the piles of ruin, nails digging into loose stones to pry them away.---[F!Byleth/Edelgard] (spoilers) Edelgardwillfind Byleth. Even if she has to pry apart every rock, every stone, every piece of rubble in the ruins of Garreg Mach.





	pieces of a heart

**Author's Note:**

> so u know how Edelgard when u reunite with her again after 5 years she's like 'I LOOKED FOR YOU EVERYWHERE' well I kept thinking about that and you know how Edelgard hates losing control so I was like HMMMM imagine Edelgard personally looking everywhere in this destroyed garreg mach and she turns over every stone and pebble and ANYHING to try and find Byleth again
> 
> and then I got more emo thinking about how the rest of the BEs would help her
> 
> this got sadder than I thought it would, but I liked a lot of how it turned out/the angst here!! hope you enjoy!!

_ “She’s alive!” _ With pained, labored breaths, Edelgard’s words tore through her throat.  _ “She’s alive, _ I know she is, we just have to find her--”

“Edelgard--” Hubert raised a hand, coated in ruin and dust from a crumbling monastery, but Edelgard whipped her hand out, furiously slamming it away.

“She’s alive,  _ I know it.” _

But even as she stood there, stood there with half her uniform with rips and tatters and her classmates panting and wounded standing before her, her mind and her heart were at odds, one beating with hope and the other clawing at remnants of logic.

Edelgard jerked around, stumbling and tripping on rubble, on rocks and crumbled columns of what’d been Garreg Mach before. All that was left was...pieces of a life now shattered. Piles and piles of rocks lay around her, mixed with dust and dirt, but Edelgard felt and saw none of it. All she saw was an excruciating second when she’d been just a few steps too far, just a few seconds too slow.

She knelt down, ignoring the ghastly scars and cuts across her arms and knees, and she reached trembling hands out at the piles of ruin, nails digging into loose stones to pry them away.

One stone, she pulled out. She let it  _ thump _ next to her.

Then another.

_ Thump. _

And another.

_ Thump. _

“Wh-what are you all  _ waiting _ for?!” Something burned in her eyes, something made her vision blurry but when she turned she saw everyone still standing there, forlorn and alone amongst the destruction. “Come  _ help me! _ We need to find her--”

“Edelgard.” Hubert’s voice; she’d never heard it like this before, rough and hoarse, shot through with an emotion that she’d never seen him experience. In his eyes, she saw herself reflected in them. “We need to go.”

_ “No!” _

Her voice echoed.

“We’re not leaving until we find her,” Edelgard choked out, and now something hot and wet was sliding down her cheeks, something she didn’t want to acknowledge. “We’re going to find her!”

It was Caspar who jerked himself forward, one step after another, even despite the wounds on his legs. He half ran, half stumbled toward her, and she watched wordlessly as this small boy threw himself down next to her, his hands covered in grime as he threw himself furiously at trying to pry away stones larger than his head.

“I-I’ll help you, Edelgard,” Caspar said through gritted teeth, snot and tears mixing with the blood from the cut on his forehead. “I’ll help you!”

She sat there and watched, feeling something overwhelming her in her chest.

Caspar, futilely slamming his hands around a giant rock, larger than his chest. Caspar, straining so hard, she saw the straining tension in his biceps, his tattered clothes making him look so small. Caspar, his face screwed up with all the emotions he wore on his sleeve.

Caspar, letting out such a raw, animallike  _ scream _ as he struggled with his entire body to move a mountain.

_ “Professor! We’ll save you!” _ Caspar’s words echoed around them, amongst the stones, amongst the darkened sky, amongst the loneliness they all found themselves in. “I’m gonna save you, I swear, if it’s the last thing I do!”

Edelgard had felt pain in her chest, thousands of times before. Scissors, knives. They’d carved her chest out countless times.

But the way her heart felt now? Edelgard had never known a greater agony inside her than the way her heart now shattered in her chest.

No wound cut deeper than loss.

Of their own accord, Edelgard’s hands raised up, gripped another rock, and pried it away.

Another, and another, and another.

For a long time, that was all there was. The sounds of herself and Caspar grunting with labored breaths to move crumbled stones, broken walls, shattered pillars. Edelgard didn’t look back, and neither did Caspar. She lost count of how many rocks she’d moved when she saw blood at her fingertips, and when she looked up, she saw someone standing close.

Lindhardt. His black uniform, swathed in dirt. His expression; it made Edelgard look away, for she couldn’t bear that heavy weight in his eyes.

She was startled when she felt and heard Lindhardt kneel down next to them both.

“Here,” he said softly. “Let me help.”

Lindhardt raised a hand, murmuring a spell, and Edelgard felt the cuts and scrapes along her hands stitch back together, healing themselves. The same happened for Caspar’s injuries, and for a moment, the three knelt there, the fading green light of Lindhardt’s magic fading away.

It made Edelgard aware of just what time it was. Close to sunset, the skies turning a darker black than before.

For a boy who hated lifting a finger, Lindhardt raised his hand just then, and an ethereal light wrapped itself around a tightly lodged stone amongst the pile of rubble. His face screwed up in concentration, he pried the stone loose, and it floated in the air before he angled his hand, and the stone landed harmlessly away from them.

Lindhardt raised his hand again, and Edelgard saw the cut on his lip, the bruise on his brow. He hadn’t even bothered to heal himself. He’d saved his magic for this.

For another few minutes, it was just the three of them trying to move away the crumbled pieces of despair lying around them, to move away the pieces of their once peaceful world.

Slowly, but surely...their classmates joined them.

Ferdinand, coming to Edelgard’s side, saying under his breath as he stripped off his tattered uniform coat, “What kind of advisor to you would I be if I let you do everything by yourself?” He labored and panted, skin sweating as the sun fell and the moon began to rise, but even so, he kept going.

Petra, who’d grabbed a few nearby branches from a fallen tree, and began to use them as levers against heavier stones. Beads of sweat broke out on her brow, grime coating the vibrant tattoo on her face, and Edelgard heard her say, “I will be finding you as well, Professor.”

Bernadetta, so small and frail and afraid, but in the tremble of her lips and the tiniest furrow of her brow, Edelgard saw a different kind of courage. She saw a small girl, so normally comfortable at being surrounded by stone walls, began to pull apart those rocks that’d once shielded her.

Then, Edelgard felt a hand on her shoulder. She looked up, expecting Hubert, but instead she saw Dorothea, her once luscious hair a mess, and a fresh scar on her brow. 

She’d lost her hat.

Without a word, Dorothea held out her other hand -- and there, Edelgard saw a handkerchief.

It was dirty.

But Dorothea knelt down next to her anyway, looking her in the eye. “You need to see,” she said softly, holding the handkerchief up. “Let me clean your face.”

“I…” Edelgard whispered. She felt so small. She was seventeen, and not only had her world crumbled around her, but she’d done it to herself. She’d destroyed the only peace she’d ever known, and now she was coming to pay the price.

She just hadn’t known the price would be the one person in the world who’d  _ become _ her world.

_ “I…” _ Edelgard couldn’t say more than that, for her eyes began to burn at the corners again, and Dorothea blurred a little.

But like always, Dorothea knew more than she let on. She nodded, gentleness in her eyes, and she’d dabbed her handkerchief at the tears falling down Edelgard’s cheeks.

“There, that’s better,” Dorothea said softly. “I think she’s alive too. We’ll find her, Edelgard.”

Not ‘Edie.’ She’d said ‘Edelgard.’

When Dorothea was finished and Edelgard felt sobs wracking her chest, her teeth gritted to stop herself from doing what she hated most -- being  _ weak -- _ did Dorothea reach out and embrace her in a hug.

With a sharp gasp, Edelgard’s hands trembled.

Even so, Dorothea didn’t let go. She knelt in front of her leader, hugging her, solid and real and warm, and for just a moment Edelgard buried her face in Dorothea’s shoulder. She was an Emperor, but she was human, too, and grief made no exceptions, not even for the great and mighty.

Then Edelgard heard Hubert next to her. “We’ll search for the rest of tonight.”

Pulling away, Edelgard looked up to see her most trusted friend roll up his tattered sleeves, saw the grim set of his jaw as he surveyed the pile of rubble. Logical and calculating, as always, but even Edelgard saw the flickers of regret in his gaze.

For the rest of the night, with nothing but the light of the moon to guide their trembling and shaking hands, they continued to move apart rubble and stone and rock, to pry away the parts of their lives that had been so peaceful just a week before. Lindhardt healed them when the cuts became too unbearable, and for a long time, there was nothing but the sounds of rocks thudding on the ground, the choked back sobs, the tearful sniffles as they all worked at a single goal.

None of them had any words to spare anyway. What could they say?

What could Edelgard say?

As the night wore on, Edelgard, even as she pulled apart Garreg Mach, piece by piece, began to pull herself back together too, piece by piece.

Rhea.

Edelgard threw a rock a little too roughly, and it smashed into pieces a ways away.

The next stone, she dug her nails in a little too tightly, but the blood at her fingertips felt like nothing to the rising, roaring wave of rage in her chest.

War was neither friend nor foe, and Death was its right hand. Edelgard had accepted long ago that the path she walked would be bathed in sacrifice, in the colors of black and red. The Black Eagles’ colors had been black and red. How suiting that the start of her revolution would turn out and start out this way.

Black, for the dark skies ahead and above, and the storm in her heart.

Red, for the blood that would stain her axe, for the rage in her chest.

When dawn began to rise over the ruined ramparts of the monastery, the Black Eagles had removed a good deal of rubble, but their resolve had remained steadfast as steel despite the hours wasting by.

But there was still no sign of the one who’d guided them all.

Even so. Edelgard was the  _ Emperor. _ The war had only just begun; if she fell apart after one battle like this, she’d never be able to defeat mankind’s greatest foe. Edelgard couldn’t lose sight of her way now. Especially not after everything...Byleth had done for her.

Byleth.

When sunlight stretched its hands over the darkened shadows of the destruction around her, Edelgard, still kneeling on the ground, pressed a fist to her heart. She was an eagle; not a sparrow any longer.

She rose to her feet, and Edelgard looked up and around to her companions. Hubert met her gaze, and for a long moment, the two stared at each other; unspoken, they both knew of the journey ahead. Even with loss...they couldn’t stop now.

Everyone else stood tall, too. In the light that outlined all of their figures with glowing white, Edelgard realized just how young they all were, but she also knew just how much they’d been through. At that moment, Edelgard had no words. Her friends had done much for her; had chosen to go and fight a god at her side. And even now, through an entire night, they’d helped her try and find the one piece that had tied them all together.

Byleth.

Somehow, in her heart, Edelgard could not snuff out the hope that Byleth was still alive. It burned fiercely in the trenches of her soul, unwilling to give in; it provided the fuel and spark for her budding determination and resolve to see the rest of this war through.

And somehow, Edelgard knew all of her friends thought the same. She could see it in their fierce gazes, in their clenched fists, in their stances as they all faced the new dawn.

Loss and grief still clung to her, making her footsteps heavy. But even so, when Edelgard turned, she saw light on the horizon -- the same kind of burning light she’d seen when Byleth had carved her way out of darkness and into the world once more.

Edelgard would do the same; she would cut her way through whatever lay before her, and she would see Byleth once again, one way or another.

She’d meet the edge of dawn, and see Byleth there too.

**Author's Note:**

> cries for edelgard I know for sure she gets herself back together to lead the war again but thinking about how she's just a seventeen year old girl and she loses like ... one of the lights in her life is just :(((
> 
> at least we all know byleth is ok she just like. passed out and avatar aang'd herself (or sothis like. bubbled her or something) into the river for like 5 years lmao
> 
> social media  
thehaakun @ twitter  
thehaakun @ tumblr


End file.
